Wednesday, 30 November 2016

This post continues the theme of Library Ireland Week, 'Empowering Through Online Access'.

One of the services the Library provides to improve your online experience is the bX Article Recommender.
bX is a very effective way to help you discover other articles that you might find useful in your research.How Does It work?
Think of it like using a shopping site such as Amazon - when you look for an item, you often find some information on the page saying 'People who viewed this item also viewed these similar items'. There you'll see a list of items similar to the one you're looking at.
bX works the same way; taking information from institutions across the globe, bX makes recommendations based on the article you're linking to.

So essentially bX is a list of articles that other users around the world viewed in addition to the one that you're linking to. It's a great way to discover more information on a topic that you mightn't have been aware of.

How Can I Use it?
It's very simple - just search for an article in our 'Including Articles' search in the catalogue and when you find an article of interest, you'll see the 'Recommendations' link with the article:

As always, sign into your Library Account first:

Enter what you're looking for and choose Including Articles:

Choose the article you want, and clink 'online access' to read it as normal. Now take a look at the tabs on screen for that article. If you see a 'Recommendations' tab, then that means bX has alternative articles for you to check out:

If you want to explore any of the articles in the list, then just press the SFX button to be brought through. Quite often the article you choose will have its own recommendations too, so it's a great way to explore good academic content for your topic:

Just a final note - bX works based on users from all around the world, so from time to time the recommendations will be for journals the Library doesn't currently subscribe to. If you don't see a 'Full Text' option in the menu, then that means the Library won't have access to it. bX is a powerful service though, and will often provide a huge amount of article recommendations for you to choose from.

The James Hardiman Library at National University of Ireland, Galway, hosted a seminar on Tuesday 4 October which told the story of the Abbey Theatre Digital Archive, created by one of the largest theatre archive digitisation projects undertaken worldwide. It reflected on challenges faced, lessons learned, new opportunities and impact on academic mission, library and archives.

Tuesday, 29 November 2016

*******The event on 14th December has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. We will reschedule it to early in the New Year. Stay tuned for a further update. Anyone who has registered will be contacted individually.*******In the new year, we will continue our series of lunchtime brown-bag eventsto focus onDuanaire, A Treasury of Digital Data for Irish Economic History.

Duanaireis the work of Dr Aidan Kane and his team. This innovate project has unearthed a wealth of Irish fiscal history data and made it accessible online in a range of formats. At its core are the detailed accounts of revenues and expenditures from the Journals of the House of Commons of the Kingdom of Ireland throughout the 1700s. These remarkably sophisticated and consistent accounts give unique insights into the evolution of the Irish economy and the press of political and military events during this fascinating period.

Dr Kanehas assembled a unique infrastructure for the imaginative curation, exploration and sharing of significant tranches of Irish economic history data. Its construction grew from collaboration between Dr Kane and his team with Moore Institute, Digital Technologist David Kelly, and theLibrary's Digital Library Developer, Cillian Joy, all of whom will speak at this seminar.

Dr Kane will talk about the evolution of the project and its future.

DavidKelly willtalkabout the re-design of the Duanaire website, and abouthiswork producing engaging, interactive data-visualisations based on the project’s data.

Cillian Joy will tell us about the Library’s involvement in providing the technology that bootstrapped the Duanaire project.He will also outline the exciting developments concerning the Library’s latest infrastructure to manage archival and research data. Cillian will also give an overviewofour advisory services in this area.

Following the presentations we will open-up the floor to general discussion about the project.This is your opportunity toengage. We are eager to hear your views whether you think Dunaire has applications to your own research, if it serves as a template for research in a related area or if you would just like to know more about the services of our Digital Library.

Everyone is welcome to this Brown-bag Pitch and registration is free.To allow us adequately provide for catering, we request that you please register. Details on how to do so will follow.

Monday, 28 November 2016

Welcome to this podcast from the Archives of the Hardiman Library, NUI Galway. This episode features a conversation with Professor Frank Shovlin, who shares his experiences and thoughts from extensive research carried out on the archive of writer, John McGahern.

Prof. Frank Shovlin

Frank was educated at University College Galway where he took BA and MA degrees before moving to complete doctoral studies at St John's College, Oxford. In 2008 frank became a senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool and in 2014 took up the role as head of department at the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool.

Frank has published widely in leading journals and publications on Irish literature, print culture and related topics. Previous monographs include "The Irish Literary Periodical 1923-1958" ; "Journey Westward: Joyce, Dubliners and the Literary Revival" and Frank's most recent monograph is entitled "Touchstones: John McGahern's Classical style"

Items from the McGahern Archive at NUI Galway

In this conversation Frank discusses his engagement with the archive of the archive John McGahern and how that archive has influenced Frank's research.

The week of 28th November is Library Ireland Week,
and this year’s theme is ‘Empowering Through Online Access’.

We in the Library are committed to providing our users with
easy access to resources of the highest quality. There is a very clearly proven
reason for this: access to the highest quality journals means you have the best
research in your field accessible to you. This means that your own research in
turn will be of high academic quality, and will subsequently be used as
research from users in other highly-ranked global research institutions.
Being part of this cyclical research process is one of the key strategic themes
for NUI Galway.

The NUI Galway user community are very heavy users of online
scholarly information to aid their research needs.

From Oct 1st 2015 to Sept 30th 2016
there were a hefty 1.68 million journal articles accessed, and an additional
700,000 ebook chapters read. So for every day during that year, the NUI Galway
user community accessed an average of 4,600 journal articles and 1,900 ebook
chapters. That’s a lot of research!

ScienceDirect is the most popular resource in NUI Galway,
with over 450,000 journal articles viewed in the last academic year. This is
over 2.5 times as many articles viewed as its nearest rival, JSTOR. The other
big multi-disciplinary resources, JSTOR, EBSCO, and Wiley all had
between 100,000 and 175,000 fulltext articles viewed over the year.

Such high figures clearly show how that while research and
innovation are strong themes for the NUI Galway’s path into the future, the NUI
Galway user community is already showing a strong commitment to research across
all disciplines.

If you want to find out more about which resources are the
best ones for your subject areas, then check out our brilliant LibGuides.
LibGuides are a perfect starting point to access the resources best for you. As
well as having dedicated subject guides for each discipline, you’ll also find
other key information on how to research effectively, systematic reviews, and valuable
information on plagiarism and citations.

Checking out the LibGuides will save you hours of work in the future, as well
as making sure the work you do will be of the highest quality; so whether it’s
an assignment or research for an article you want to publish, we’ve got you
covered.

Friday, 25 November 2016

As part ofLibrary Ireland Week weare promoting a number of our online newspapers with a focus on Irish resources.The Irish Newspaper Archive is a wonderful example of this providing access to a range of national and provincial newspapers, with extensive historical and contemporary coverage.It is the primary online source for:

the Irish Independent

the Sunday Independent

Irish provincial newspapers

The newspapers are in complete digital, searchable form. The Irish Newspaper Archive is now the main method of access to provincial newspapers in the Library.

Thursday, 24 November 2016

Today's theme looks at cars and the history of motoring in various collections. Being able to look back and admire the design and engineering of early cars in the twentieth century also prompts us to look at how the needs of motorists have also changed over the years. Records from the Galway Town Commissioner's ledgers of minutes and correspondence (Collection LA4) show how in 1918, as the War was still ongoing in Europe, a concern for the local Town Commission was the level of damage being caused to local roads owing to the increased volume of army vehicle traffic. Read the entry from the volume in full below:

Some other items and images of interest are from the photographic archive of Jean Ritchie and George Pickow. Ritchie was a celebrated American folk singer, who was part of the famous 'Singing Ritchies' family of Appalachia area of America. On Fullbright scholarship trip to Ireland in the early 1950s, Jean travelled around Ireland collecting folk songs from various individuals. Accompanied by her husband George Pickow, their trip records not only the image below of Jean with, perhaps, a Daimler car in 1953. (A positive I.D. on the make and model of the car is welcome!)

Also of interest within this collection are wonderful images of Dublin's O'Connell street in the early 1950s. We are used to seeing Dublin's streets choked with traffic today but we can but imagine the quite recent past of the 1950s where bicycles far outnumbered the number of cars on Dublin's main thoroughfare. These images show another side of Irish society, before the motor car became the primary mode of transport in today's society. It is also of the period between when Dublin's original tram system was removed and today's modern LUAS was reinstalled onto Dublin's streets.

Wednesday, 23 November 2016

The visitor book of Queens College Galway/University College Galway is a record of all guests and notable visitors to campus for the years 1877 - 1928. A simple volume like this was in use when the campus comprised only the Quadrangle building we know today but carries huge significance within the hundreds of signatures within its pages. The book covers a span of years that was revolutionary, in many senses, in Ireland and for the University with its place within the network of 'Queen's Colleges' of Ireland and the U.K.

Through the years the book was in use, it witnessed the growth of the University, the rise and fall of Charles Stewart Parnell, the reign and later death of Queen Victoria, the 1916 Rising which had ripple effects across the west, the first world war which saw staff and students of the college enlist and also die on the battlefields of Europe, the 1918 Election, and other major events through the Revolutionary period in Ireland, through to the late 1920s.

The book has been on display in the Archives and Special Collections Reading Room for much of this year as a centre-piece of the exhibition, "A University in War and Revolution: 1913 - 1919". A truly unique occurrence happens in August 1899 when both Pearse brothers, Padraig and William, sign the register as visitors to campus. It is a rare occasion in history where both brothers' signatures are signed side-by side.

Signatures of the Pearse brothers, QCG, 1899

However, another curiosity occurs at the very last entry in the book. Dated 1928 is the signature of 'Douglas Fairbanks', Hollywood, Cal[ifornia]." There is no available information as to why Fairbanks, one of the most celebrated actors of his generation at the time was at UCG. Fairbanks was married to actress Mary Pickford at the time, who had Irish roots. Was he here as a guest of the President of the University or an academic? Was he on holidays in the region at the time? Or was the signature a prank by a student of the day?! Any film buffs out there who might have any clues, do let us know.